Microsoft Inspire: News Summary for Day 2 Keynote

The Day 2 keynote at Microsoft Inspire focused on the companies industry efforts and real world solutions built on Microsoft technologies by partners to address customer needs in their digital transformation.

Microsoft's Day 2 Vision Keynote at their annual partner conference in Washington, D.C. shifted the focus from vision to implementation.

By providing real world examples of how partners created solutions for their own customers that were built on Microsoft technologies, the Redmond company was able to show the more than 17,000 partners in attendance and those watching online exactly how there are opportunities to change the way things are done in businesses.

The keynote was led by Microsoft's Executive Vice President of their Worldwide Commercial Business, Judson Althoff, and continued to build upon the companies efforts to help customers with their digital transformations using four key pillars:

-- Empowering Employees

-- Engaging Customers

-- Optimizing Operations

-- Transforming Products

After reviewing many of these elements and the new alignments within the companies sales force, Althoff invited Toni Townes-Whitley, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President for Industry, to talk about how they are heading in their work with industries. She also elaborated on the alignments that were mentioned earlier by Althoff.

-- In London for bus and underground travelers they handle about 11 million people each day

When Althoff returned to the stage, the remainder of the keynote time was dedicated to talking with four different partners and their customers to show the real world solutions which were created through the Microsoft Cloud.

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Empowering Employees and Saving Lives in South Africa

BroadReach is a tech consultancy that improves the management and delivery of health programs in underserved regions around the world. They connect NGOs, donors, governments, and healthcare providers with the right technology and people to drive positive health and social outcomes.

BroadReach and USAID have developed the 90-90-90 Challenge, an innovative data-driven strategy to combat HIV in South Africa that aims to achieve three goals:

90 percent of citizens living with HIV to know their status

90 percent of people infected to be on antiretroviral therapy

90 percent of those on treatment to be virally suppressed

In partnership with the South African Department of Health over five years, BroadReach implemented the BroadReach Vantage platform to streamline health delivery analysis, decision-making and improve the quality of service delivery. Thanks in part to the platform’s adoption, evaluation of the 90-90-90 Challenge has shown that viral load completion rates nearly tripled, suppression rates rose from 57 percent to 81 percent, and 55 person-years were saved by automating data collection and reporting. In the five districts where this new approach is being followed, they expect to save half a million lives by the end of 2017.

Looking ahead, the team plans to take the platform to Azure to create a whole new experience, and to use Office 365 and Teams to better connect clinics and staff and to use machine learning to predict which patients have a high probability of stopping treatment.

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Transforming Fire Safety in Germany

Working together with HHPBerlin, a fire safety, and engineering firm, Microsoft partner ProMX developed the One System Dashboard, which uses Dynamics for radically simplified workflow management, faster project delivery, and product innovation. The building information management system is built entirely on Azure and provides a 3D view of progress, including real-time project updates, and automatically generated changes to client quotes. The end result is a more coordinated, more price-accurate, and ultimately more detailed and accessible project.

ProMX and HHPBerlin’s digital transformation journey has opened up new market opportunities with cities’ planning/permitting and emergency services departments. For example, their FireFramework program uses a fire simulation system based on a 3D building model to simulate and model potential fire behaviors. FireBot, which uses Microsoft’s cognitive services and vision AI allows citizens to report a fire or other emergency by sending a picture from their phone.

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Loss-prevention leaders: Track’em saves time, money and headaches with cloud-based tracking system

Working at a mining site in Australia a decade ago, Kashif Saleem saw firsthand a problem that has long plagued large construction projects. Put simply, things go missing.

On complex projects with thousands of components, materials and other parts are often misplaced. They may not make it onto shipping barges. They get left in warehouses. They’re pilfered. A fabricator claims a piece was sent, but no one knows where it is. Someone uses the wrong part, mistaking it for a similar one. And while cranes sit idle and workers wait, the job grinds to a halt and costs pile up. And up.

A software developer, Saleem was working as an information technology support technician at the mining site, but he quickly saw a different need for his skills. Bright and ambitious, he quietly got to work developing a software system for tracking materials and other assets across projects, from start to finish.

This work and solution led to him creating a company called Track'em and it now uses the Microsoft Cloud and other innovative techniques such as drones to scan large parts to inventory and account for various hardware and parts.

The real world examples seemed to be a good way to show other partners the creativity necessary to meet a customers needs and all of the examples did just that and were across a wide range of industries such as retail, manufacturing, mining, medical, and safety.